


Hurricane

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Bat, a Cat, and a Hushed realisation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurricane

 

 

When people talk about romance, they talk about candlelight and whispered I-love-yous and red roses. They think of quiet moments of shared peace, or of a whirlwind of passion.

What him and her share is more a hurricane than a whirlwind, she thinks, because it involves the wrong sort of darkness and ambient lighting. They have streetlights instead of candles, and the darkness of Kevlar and leather instead of closed curtains and silk sheets.

A hurricane indeed, she decides as she sways backwards to avoid his fist. She can tell from the set of his mouth that he's angry – beyond angry – and that amuses her. She wonders why this one has pissed him off so much, and she finds that she doesn't care.

He fascinates her, though, so she does everything in her considerable power to entice him. Since he started paying attention, the leathers have gotten tighter, and she's taken to wearing dark red lipstick while she works.

Every so often, the zipper slips down and he gets a glimpse of cleavage. Only a glimpse.

She knows that she infuriates him by refusing to fight back anymore. She did at the start, and she knows that he must bear scars somewhere on that delectable body of his. She hopes, in a strange way, that he does – she feels strangely territorial of him, and she likes that he might be marked as hers.

She bites her lip as she dances back to the edge of the roof, winks behind the lenses of her goggles and then flips elegantly into the waiting darkness below, leaving the ambient lighting and the air of longing behind with him on the roof.

Not that she isn't doing some longing of her own, of course.

 

* * *

He wonders why exactly he's never handed her in. He's had her at his mercy so many times, and yet each and every time she escapes.

Or is let escape.

He's not good with words, which suits his style - or maybe it shaped his style. He neither knows nor cares.

He does know that she's different. She's a thief, yes, a criminal. But...

She's interesting, and that makes him mad. He can't afford to be interested in anything, especially not something that comes wrapped in skin tight leather and that has that knowing little smile on those dark red lips...

Especially not something that left him with a trio of parallel scars on his left shoulder with those damned claws.

There's something in their ritualistic encounters atop the most opulent of buildings, in decidedly inelegant and often downright ugly locales. He finds himself seeking her out when things are quiet, and their encounters always - always - take a physical turn. Usually, he wouldn't hit a woman.

He makes an exception for her.

But the physicality of it is the only predictable aspect of their... Well, he's at loathe to call it a relationship, although that's probably what it is. No, there's something wild and unknowable about this thing they share, and it sees them beating each other senseless one night and...

Losing their senses another way the next.

He hates it as much as he longs for it, because he likes to be in control. He can't see himself ever being in control of her.

 

* * *

He hates to admit it, but she's changing him.

Since he let her in, no matter how reluctantly he did so, she's done something to him, and he's not entirely sure what. He doesn't feel the need to pretend to be something he's not for everyone else anymore, though. He can be serious and sometimes even intelligent in public now. He can talk about clever things, can take an interest in the company his family built, be something closer to his true self.

And, though he loathes admitting it, it's because of her.

He never intended for this to happen. She's wrong for him in every possible way. She's a thief, one that he could never quite catch, too good at her job for him to be comfortable about it. It unnerves him that she seems to be able to predict his next move, his every move, almost as successfully as he can predict hers.

Oh, her company is interesting. She's a highly intelligent woman, and he admires her for never hiding that. She's annoyed more of his social circle than is probably healthy, insulted more, but she doesn't care. There's a refreshing freedom in her manner that's proving quite addictive.

It doesn't hurt that the physical attraction between them is so powerful, of course, but it's a distraction that he can't handle.

No, it's not that he  _can't_  handle it – it's that he doesn't know  _how_.

 

* * *

She knows how much she frustrates him, but she thinks he should be aware that it's a two-way street.

She's changed for him. Obvious changes, too – no more thieving, no more admiring sparkly things so much that she just has to have them. She's turned over a new leaf because of him, even though she promised herself that she'd never let a man have that sort of control over her ever again.

But this doesn't feel like a bad thing, no matter how much she wishes it did. If it felt like a bad thing then maybe, just maybe, she could push him away, because he's infuriating.

She doesn't understand what it is about him that's so compelling, though, because she simply can't take a step back. There's something so fascinating about him, even though she knows what he considers his deepest secret, and she has to find out why she's so attracted to him – not in the physical sense.

When he broods, she thinks that maybe she's mad for sticking around, but then he'll do something utterly lovely and she can't leave him. He needs her, more than he cares to admit, and maybe, just maybe, she needs him on some level.

She hopes that he realises that, because she's going to need him to save her from this.

 

* * *

As her eyes drift closed, the other man lifts a scalpel and smiles. Revenge is a dish best served cold, after all, and he's waited his entire life for an opportunity like this to present itself.

 

* * *

Ever since he saved her, risking his own life in the process, things have been different. ****

When Bruce came crashing through that door as Hush lowered the scalpel towards her skin, she was just alert enough to be relieved. The anaesthetic kicked in fully during the ensuing fight, but she was aware of him pulling the mask from her face and cradling her to his chest as they left Hush in that awful room.

When Bruce was waiting for her, as Bruce, when she woke up, she knew something was different. He was asleep in the chair beside her bed, holding her hand as if his life depended on it. In his sleep, he seems more peaceful than he ever does in his waking hours.

When he's asleep, she's found, she can see a glimpse of the man he might have been if his parents hadn't been taken from him. If he'd grown up as happily as he should have, he would have been a great man. Not that she doesn't see him as a great man now, of course, but he would have been so different. He might have been happy, for example, or able to let someone in.

Able to love someone.

The knowledge that she loves him crashes down on her, and she's too weak from whatever cocktail of drugs Hush injected her with to fight it back. She needs to be focused, strong-

Oh, who cares? She loves Bruce Wayne. Maybe it's about time she admitted it. Everyone else seems to have realised it.

 

* * *

When he burst into that room and saw Hush hovering over Selina's motionless body, scalpel in hand, it was one of the most heart-stoppingly terrifying moments of his existence. Everything but a desperate need to make her safe disappeared, and he came  _this close_  to killing the madman.

His sleep, when his body eventually betrays him and simply shuts down, is tormented with images of Selina's corpse, her funeral, of Hush toying with her lifeless remains. They're also graced with the presence of a Selina who doesn't exist, a Selina who didn't have to fight for everything she ever had, a Selina who grew up happy.

He doesn't like that idea for selfish reasons. If Selina had grown up happy, she would never have become Catwoman and he would never have met her.

He realised some time ago that he's in love with her, although he's never admitted it to anyone. He doesn't intend to admit it to anyone, ever. To love Selina would be dangerous-

A gentle pressure on his hand jolts him awake, and he opens his eyes to meet Selina's dark-eyed gaze.

 

* * *

"Hey, lover boy," she drawls softly. "Thanks."

He smiles and lifts her hand to his lips.

"It was nothing."

Neither says it aloud, but both know. In that tiny exchange, everything for them has changed, because the great unspoken admittance makes it different.

In the quiet calm of the moment, they just sit together, reflecting that this is the aftermath of everything they've been through together. From professional rivalry to this…

Whatever this is.

Neither is sure what it is, but they're both pretty sure it requires more delicate handling than their relationship thus far.

**Author's Note:**

> Written a very long time ago, set in the movie-verse but wildly AU as of TDK. Contains elements of "Heart of Hush."


End file.
